Category: Public Media

Source: Radio New Zealand

A man accused of sexually abusing a boy into his teens has been acquitted on some charges, while others left a hung jury.

Michael Mclean has been on trial in the Auckland District Court, with his defence calling the allegations nonsense and claiming they never happened.

Mclean originally faced 33 charges, including performing indecent acts on a person under 16, grooming and sexual violation.

One of the lawyers for Mclean told RNZ the Crown pulled a number of charges early in the trial, including all but one of the sexual violation charges, leaving Mclean to face 25 charges.

Jurors entered deliberation last Wednesday and came back on Friday, acquitting Mclean on six charges.

The jury was hung on the remaining 19.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A woman has been arrested, as police continue to investigate a stabbing in a central Wellington bar, and they have renewed a call for anyone who saw what happened.

Emergency services were called to the Ace of Spades Bar in Allen Street, about 1.30am Saturday, 13 December, where they were told a man had been stabbed.

As a result of investigations, a 34-year-old woman has now been charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

“The stabbing allegedly occurred during an altercation involving a small number of patrons,” Detective Sergeant Graeme Muir said. “The victim was stabbed in the abdomen and sustained serious injuries.”

Police believe other people were present when the incident happened and would like to speak to them. They have also asked for anyone who has footage from the bar on the night to come forward.

Police earlier said bar security staff intervened when the altercation broke out and separated the groups involved.

Staff then helped the stabbed man, who was taken to Wellington Hospital, where he was in a stable condition on Monday.

The woman arrested is now scheduled to appear at Wellington District Court on Monday, 22 December.

Anyone with information was asked to call Police on 105, or visit their online page at 105.police.govt.nz and to quote file number 251213/4525.

Information could also be provided anonymously through Crimestoppers by calling 0800 555 111 or on their website.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A research project has discovered a way to use sound as a harmless deterrent to keep cats away from nesting native birds.

Senior scientist at the Bioeconomy Science Institute (formerly known as Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research) Patrick Garvey told RNZ the aim was to create a non-lethal deterrent for cats – both feral and domestic.

Feral cats were recently added to the Predator Free 2050 target species list, but domestic cats remain a treasured part of many New Zealand households.

There is no official estimate of how many feral cats live in New Zealand. While 2.4 million is often cited, some believe the true number is far higher.

Garvey said the idea for the research was born from a similar trial by a collaborator in Canada in 2016, who used the sound of dogs barking to successfully deter raccoons.

Garvey’s own group was granted funding many years later, through the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, to carry out similar tests here, targeting cats.

Through trial and error, they found feral cats were most averse to the sound of human voices and domestic cats were most averse to the sound of other cats.

The tests involved placing 22 feral cats – all caught by the research group from the wild – inside a fenced enclosure, along with four samples of mince, one in each corner. One would be randomly selected to be ‘protected’ by a specific sound and when an approaching cat was detected by a camera, a sound played through a speaker.

Garvey said the results showed 40 percent of cats avoided food protected by the sound of other cats and dogs barking, but 70 percent avoided the sound of human voices.

By contrast, testing in urban environments showed domestic cats were most averse to the sound of other cats and didn’t mind human voices.

The sounds were played at 60 decibels – for a human, Garvey said, you’d need to be about 20 metres away, before you heard anything – and featured non-aggressive human speech, including a storybook reading and an interview with famed jazz musician Dizzy Gillespie.

Anything too aggressive or controversial might alarm passers-by, Garvey said, as well as becoming quite grating for the person charged with setting it up.

The next step for the researchers was to try to protect colony breeding birds near braided rivers from feral cats and they also worked with Auckland Council to put out speakers in another reserve.

More research was needed to determine just how effective it could be in practice.

“It’s a tool in the toolbox,” Garvey said, a way to engage the community and educate them on the damage roaming cats could do.

“The sound cues will deflect a proportion of the cats – it’ll be more than a third of them, but it’s not going to do all of them,” he said.

“It can provide a tool to engage with the community and show people what’s happening, and maybe they might consider when they let their cats out at night.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Concerns are being raised that the New Zealand government has shortchanged Samoa since HMNZS Manawanui sank off the south coast of Upolu last year.

Letters released under the Official Information Act show the Samoa government has agreed it will not seek further compensation from New Zealand.

The letters, released by Winston Peters’ office, show Samoa’s Foreign Affairs Ministry proposed compensation of 10 million tala – about $NZ6m – which the then- Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mata’afa signed off.

The $10 million tala was paid “in the context of the friendship between New Zealand and Samoa” and the letters include “New Zealand’s deep regret regarding the sinking of the HMNZS Manawanui and New Zealand’s gratitude to Samoa for search and rescue efforts that helped avoid loss of life.” They say New Zealand will “work with Samoa to assess and address any environment risks.”

In his letter to Fiamē on 19 May 2025, Winston Peters explains the compensation “resolves all issues arising from the sinking of the HMNZS Manawanui between the government of New Zealand and the government of Samoa” and “the government of Samoa will not seek further payment from New Zealand”.

The New Zealand government announced the $NZ6m/ $SAT10m compensation on the first anniversary of the sinking of the HMNZS Manawanui on 6 October.

Read the documents:Letters released from the office of Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters under the Official Information Act 1982.

(Peters’ office noted the letter dated 19 May 2025 from New Zealand was bound and printed on parchment, which is why it is not on letterhead here.)

Auckland University of Technology law professor Paul Myburgh thought this amount was a “first down payment” to look after impacted villages: “But reading these letters it becomes apparent that they are attempting to ring-fence all of their liability, apart from a reference – a fairly obscure reference – to ongoing reef assessments, whatever that might mean.”

It was difficult to say what an appropriate compensation amount would be, he said.

• Read more: NZ strikes compensation deal with Samoa over Manawanui sinking

“I’m not across all the details, but one thing I’ve learnt from comparative collisions and groundings etcetera is that it is very difficult to assess and cap the damages because they tend to be ongoing. In other words, while that wreck is still on the reef it will continue to cause damage, so any sort of legal attempt to cap the damages indefinitely means that somebody along the line is going to be short-changed.”

• Read more: ‘The job hasn’t been completed’ – Manawanui wreck still causing concerns one year after sinking

The wreck of the HMNZS Manawanui lying on its side under about 30m of water (about 98 feet) on the Tafitoala Reef, on the south coast of Upolu, in August. New Zealand Defence Force

Senior lecturer and Pacific Security Fellow at Victoria University’s Centre for Strategic Studies, Dr Iati Iati, was surprised that the letters reference Samoa’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs as having set the compensation figure at 10m tala.

“I hadn’t heard of any process for an independent inquiry for how much the costs would be,” he said.

“I was a little taken aback by the figure of 10 million tala only because I’ve seen a study done by Massey University over the Rena, and it was done I think around 2021 and they estimated costs for the Rena – direct costs that is – around 46 million (NZD). That wasn’t including indirect costs.”

• Read more: Ten years on from the Rena disaster

Iati noted the Rena had sunk much further out at sea in comparison to the Manawanui, and the impact would have been different and probably less than what was experienced in Samoa.

“So it’s left me with a lot of questions as to how they determined that $10 million tala figure,” he said.

The ship sank in early October 2024, after running aground on a reef. All crew escaped to safety, with locals helping the rescue efforts. Supplied / Profile Boats

Winston Peters’ letter to then- Samoa Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mata’afa, dated 19 May 2025, refers to “the long established and respectful bilateral relationship between New Zealand and Samoa founded upon sovereign equality and governed by a spirit of close friendship, underpinned by the significant Treaty of Friendship.”

“To be honest it leaves me with more questions than answers. This looks like to me just a very diplomatic way to bring this situation to an end without addressing alot of issues that should have been addressed,” Iati said.

“I’m curious as to whether there’s more to this than just New Zealand sending the Manawanui to do some kind of reef surveying. I’d be interested to know if there were any other actors involved and what their reasons were for the Manawanui to be conducting these exercises on the coast of Samoa, especially given that the order for the Manawanui to conduct this exercise was finalised just as it was leaving port so it seems to me like there’s a wider story here that hasn’t been looked at.”

• Read more: Samoan villagers still waiting for compensation more than a year after Manawanui disaster

Iati questioned whether other parties should also be liable for some part of the cost of the impact of the Manawanui that was born by the Samoan people.

With 40 years experience as an oil spill response scientist, Paul Irving was in Samoa soon after the Manawanui sank, for SPREP – the Secretariat of the Pacific Environment Programme.

“My role and function was to work with and for the Samoan government as much as possible. I was effectively loaned to them by SPREP to provide, to organise advice, to seek international support and to give them the best advice possible given that they were not the spiller, their country was the victim.”

• Read more: ‘We’re eating tinned fish’ – Samoa villagers plead for Manawanui wreckage compensation

Irving said the correspondence between Winston Peters and Fiamē was diplomatic, rather than a letter of compensation or insurance usually associated with one country causing another country injury or harm due to the actions of its sovereign citizens.

“I think six million New Zealand dollars – ten million tala – is a relatively small amount given that the estimate to remove the vessel from the area was around, between 75 and 100 million New Zealand dollars, so I think New Zealand got away with about 10 percent of the cost of cleaning up,” Irving said.

“The New Zealand government certainly was not thinking the same way when it required more than 500 million dollars to be spent by the owners of the Rena to clean up the reef in the Bay of Plenty.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Emergency Services are working at the scene of a fiery crash, and police warn it has closed State Highway One lanes near Hampton Downs.

No one was seriously injured in the crash on Sunday, police said in a statement.

However the vehicle had caught fire after the crash.

Northbound lanes of the Waikato Expressway were closed while the crashed vehicle and response teams were blocking the road.

They asked motorists to stay away from the area.

The Transport Agency said a detour was in place by exiting SH1 onto Te Kauwhata Road and rejoining the highway at the Mercer on-ramp.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Officials say transparency is critical to build trust in the government’s most important data system, but the business case for expanding it is mostly blanked out.

Over two-thirds of the 95 pages in the business case to overhaul the Integrated Data Infrastructure, or IDI, are entirely (or a few almost entirely) redacted.

The black pen has been swept over all the options the government is looking at, all the costs to the taxpayer and the cost-benefit analysis.

Yet the business case report stated, “Transparency was highlighted as critical to building trust, with calls for clearer communication about data use, access, and safeguards.”

This was after holding five workshops with iwi, industry and non-government organisations a few months back.

Some groups really did not trust what government was doing with data, the report noted.

Referring to feedback from the Data Iwi Leaders Group, Stats NZ said, “Trust and reciprocity were identified as foundational to any future data system.”

A much more powerful IDI is crucial to the government’s social investment approach, but there were barriers.

“The social license for expanded social investment is untested,” said the report.

“There is a need to build robust data ethics practices and safeguards into the social investment approach (especially as this approach expands). This is important to maintain public trust in how government uses data and to ensure individuals and communities are comfortable sharing their data with government.”

Both the indicative business case and a Cabinet paper in October – which was when the interim business case was approved and a detailed business case ordered up – had a lot to say about how urgent it was to transform the “clunky and slow” IDI.

It was the tool that “that brings it all together”.

“The IDI is the only integrated data tool available to support the government’s social investment approach,” said the proactively released Cabinet paper.

Why so much was blanked out

The mass blanking out of the report was to “maintain the constitutional conventions for the confidentiality of advice tendered by ministers and officials” to Cabinet, Stats NZ told RNZ in its response to an Official Information Act request (OIA). This is one of the grounds allowed under OIA law.

Business cases for government projects typically lay out the options and how they compare, and often they recommend one or the other.

Both the long-listed options and the short-listed ones are blanked entirely in the IDI report, as are the critical success factors.

If you wanted to read the “detailed analysis of long list options”, too bad.

The “Economic Case” section was 19 pages long but only one page and two paragraphs of that survive for the public to read, and these illuminated little, other than to say doing a cost-benefit analysis was tricky.

A suggestion from a UK approach was that for every dollar invested you got $4 back. How does it pay off? For instance, in NZ data research inside the IDI helped spur more investment in driver training for young people, which was shown to cut how many ended up in court and costing society more.

The “Commercial Case” and the “Financial Case” in the business case were both entirely blanked out. The index showed these considered the funding model and “overall affordability”.

Missing from view too, were the main risks anticipated from implementation, and the key constraints, dependencies and assumptions.

Uncharted territory

The scope of the “transformation” of the IDI could take it into uncharted territory, as the report briefly noted.

“All data in the IDI is de-identified, so while it can be used to analyse ‘cohorts’ of people, it cannot be used for case management or targeting services to individuals,” it said.

“Any shift in how the IDI is used – for example, towards targeting services to individuals, would require significant legislative change and building strong social license for such a change.”

Most of what is left unredacted and readable in the business case are the reasons why the overhaul was required, for instance, as the key testing ground for how to spend the $190 million Social Investment Fund.

The IDI has 15 billion rows of data, but can be refreshed only three times a year because it takes so long – 12-14 weeks per refresh. It underwent its biggest refresh in June this year that required 90 hours of staff overtime to complete on the final day before deadline.

“Data integration is labour-intensive, access is limited, and data coverage and quality are patchy,” said the business case.

The Cabinet paper said demand was “increasing rapidly” particularly as the government expanded the so-called “Outcomes-Based-Contracting” model and the fledgling Social Investment Agency, and Whānau Ora commissioned more contracts through Te Puni Kōkiri.

The 15-year-old system was no match for this. “A single complex analysis within the IDI Data Lab can slow the system down for all users, turning a simple query from another user that would normally take seconds into a full day wait.”

A concentration of labs

Data Labs are the only way to access and use the IDI which has no internet connection at all to protect its contents.

There are 40 labs, over half of those are in Wellington (22), while Auckland had nine. Sydney, Rotorua, Palmerston North and Hamilton had one or two labs each – but the South Island in total had just three.

The business case, what can be seen of it, does not talk about this geographical barrier to researchers.

It quoted them saying “real-time and on-demand access to integrated data was seen as critical” but little was said about how that might be tackled.

“Streamlining research approvals and improving access protocols were suggested to reduce barriers,” it said.

A trust in Tai Rāwhiti has told RNZ about how it had to get expert help just to draw up its application for research approval, let along get hold of the coding and technical knowhow to design ways to get the data it was after once it was inside the Lab.

The IDI overhaul has been slowgoing. The indicative business case report was delivered a year overdue.

Stats NZ, in its OIA response, said it had also been delayed in developing a multiyear data and statistical programme as had been ordered, due to “competing priorities, including modernising the census and social investment”.

Plus the dedicated data support team it was meant to have set up by October ran into problems signing contracts with other agencies, so instead it had been doing its own work improving the data flow in the IDI, among other things.

Stats NZ acting deputy chief executive – office of the chief executive Sarah Dwen said the agency “absolutely recognised” the need to build public trust and confidence in the work it does.

“Transparency and being open with communities are part of that, as are lots of other factors including reliability, visibility and accessibility.

“When it comes to transparency, we need to balance that with the requirement to keep some information confidential in order to comply with Cabinet rules and guidelines, government information management guidelines and with legal frameworks.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A sudden death investigation is underway after a person was pulled from the water, at Waiotapu, near Rotorua.

At 6.15am on Sunday, emergency services were told a person had been “pulled from the water unresponsive” near Waiotapu Loop Rd.

“Enquiries are now underway to establish the circumstances surrounding the death, which is being treated as unexplained,” police said.

A person was helping with the investigation, a spokesperson said and a scene examination was about to be done.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Analysis – The 2025 Parliamentary year has ended and it was a monster.

In MPs’ final hurrah-the adjournment debate-David Seymour announced “this government has passed more legislation in the first two years of its three than any MMP Parliament has passed in its whole three years.”

Previous to this 54th Parliament, experts have said New Zealand passed too many laws; heaven knows what those folk would think now.

Parliament is breaking records both for bills passed and for a lack of careful process.

Here are a few numbers from this completed year and this parliament (so far). Where possible the current numbers are compared to previous years or parliaments.

The fun stuff

The vast throughput has chemical drivers and consolations. In his own summary of the year, the Speaker Gerry Brownlee revealed that the Beehive’s in-house cafeteria, Copperfields, sold “60,000 hot drinks-mainly coffee”.

Chris Bishop responded “I think I’ve taken quite a few thousand”, and Nicola Willis piped up, “half of them were for me”.

In a depressant mirror to the Beehive’s stimulants, the in-house bar has moved from the Beehive to Parliament House. It is now further away from the Ministers causing the workload and closer to the backbenchers suffering under it.

The golden throat lozenge awards

Working with Hansard data for the whole Parliament (up until mid-October 2025), I have squeezed out some very rough numbers to find who has done all the talking.

These numbers are for House debates but not question time. Note though: Hansard’s data is not well structured for careful statistical torture, so take the results with a pinch of numerical salt.

The easy winner of the Golden Throat Lozenge Award (for time on their feet) is Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan who spoke 396 times, uttering roughly 194,000 words.

He won the gong despite joining this parliament a few months late (arriving in March 2024 after the sad death of Efeso Collins). Xu-Nan’s tactical pleonism explains the following from Parliament final day:

Xu-Nan: “Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s actually not that common that I get two speeches back to back-what a treat!”. Speaker: “Well, why don’t you give us a treat and make it short.”

He didn’t.

Gerry Brownlee spoke twice more than Xu-Nan (398 times), but presiding officers are brief. Opposition MPs use their full 10 minutes every call if at all possible.

The top ten MPs for words spoken are all from the opposition (see below).

Government backbenchers say very little to defend their own bills (to save time), while opposition are wordy to slow things down (and give bills the fullest possible consideration), especially when bills skip select committees or are being considered under urgency.

MPs at the ‘vow of silence’ end of the list are mostly from National.

Other than recent arrivals the most taciturn were Melissa Lee (just 15 speeches) and Shane Reti (20). Both offered between 6000-7000 words.

The quietest opposition MPs are 13 and 15 places from the bottom. They were Adrian Rurawhe (25 speeches for nearly 14,000 words) and Jenny Salesa (30 speeches for a little over 12,281 words).

Major party leaders spend little time in the House, other than from question time and set-piece debates like the budget.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon managed just 18 speeches, but some were very long so his total words spoken (c. 27,000) raises him to 78th of 123 MPs. Labour leader Chris Hipkins beats him with 47 speeches for 38,000 words.

Minor leaders appear more often. David Seymour made 68 calls for 64,000 words, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer 87 for 62,000, Chloe Swarbrick 82 or 54,000, Winston Peters 47 for 36,00 and Rawiri Waititi 48 for 31,000 words.

Green co-leader Marama Davidson is not included, as multiple MPs named Davidson muddy the waters.

The most loquacious of the government ministers was Chris Bishop (208 speeches and 86,000 words). He has had a number of complex bills spend lengthy periods in the Committee of the Whole, and is a minister happy to answer questions and engage in that stage of deliberation.

Party speaking time

The largest parties get more allocated speaking slots, but only the opposition make full use of theirs.

As noted, the opposition also speak a lot during the unallocated Committee of the Whole stage. Whole days can go by when government backbenchers offer nothing except repeating “I move that debate on this question now close”, which is parliamentese for ‘please stop already’.

Public engagement

Gerry Brownlee reports: “73,000 people went through Parliament in tours this year-quite a large number. If you include visitors who came here for various meetings, that number goes up to 122,000. When you think about the number of people visiting here, it means that, I think, we have a strong democracy, and we’ve got to make sure that this place remains as open as it possibly can.”

The public have been visiting electronically as well.

The bills under debate have attracted an avalanche of public feedback that stretched Parliament’s secretariat until the poor clerks drowned in e-paper. Committees even found it necessary to restrict the extent of some of their reports back to the House (a core function).

It has been suggested to me that the quality of ministerial officials’ advice to committees (and presumably also to government) has degraded with so many different legislative plans for departments to consider.

Clerk of the House of Representatives David Wilson told the Standing Orders Committee, “Two Parliament ago there were 95,000 submissions which we thought was a lot. Now there are over 600,000 in this one.”

The most written submissions for this Parliament (or any Parliament) was the massive new record of 295,670 written submissions on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill.

Legislative process and urgency

The table below outlines the process of non-budgetary government bills over six parliaments (most recent on the left). Each parliament’s figures are truncated at a matching point in the Parliament’s progress. None are for a full three years.

The current government has introduced far more bills and skipped more select committees than any of the previous five.

The bills that did go through committees had their committee consideration time curtailed more than in any parliament except during John Key’s first government.

For more granular detail on the use of urgency by stage, the chart below is data from The Newsroom’s journalist Marc Daalder. In this case, numbers for previous parliaments are truncated to match the same number of calendar days as the current term has taken.

The 2025 sitting year included 87 sitting days and two weeks of full-time committee scrutiny of government in lieu of the House sitting.

Of the 87 sitting days, 13 did not start afresh, but were just continuations of the previous day. The 87 days broke down to:

Oversight of government

One of any parliament’s core roles is keeping a check on the government that is a subset of itself. This is possible because, constitutionally, governments are subservient to parliaments, though governments often try to eschew this relationship.

Oversight happens in various ways in the House and committees. Most are hard to measure, except the asking of formal questions of ministers.

Oral questions can be a key tool, but when ministers are allowed by Speakers to avoid answering questions they lose all potency, and written questions (which are harder to ignore) gain importance.

See this article for a more detailed, recent look at numbers around Select Committee workloads.

Thanks to The Office of the Clerk, Hansard and Marc Daalder for data.

RNZ’s The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament’s Office of the Clerk. Enjoy our articles or podcast at RNZ.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand